Clinton stumbles on Wall Street question at CNN town hall

DERRY, N.H. — Hillary Clinton gave no ground to Bernie Sanders over her progressive credentials at a televised forum Wednesday night, but the most notable moment came when Clinton was forced to answer a question about her Wall Street ties from moderator Anderson Cooper.

The night featured few fireworks, but Clinton found herself on the defensive when presented with one of Sanders’ key talking points: that she shouldn’t have taken high amounts of speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.

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“Well, I don't know. That’s what they offered,” she said when asked whether she needed to be paid for three speeches amounting to $675,000, which Sanders often points to as evidence that she is beholden to Wall Street. "Every secretary of state that I know has done that."

Clinton again reminded Cooper that she represented New York — the home of Wall Street — and insisted that she didn’t regret taking money from big banks, pointing to her plan to reform the financial services industry.

“They’re not giving me that much money now,” she said, adding that many of her donations are from small donor, many of them women — and that she "wasn't committed" to running for president when she agreed to give the speeches in question.

Sanders, in response to a question earlier from Cooper, unleashed a long list of policy disagreements while suggesting the former secretary of state was a newcomer to the progressive cause.

Prefacing his concerns with an extended discourse on his respect for the Democratic national front-runner, Sanders then launched into his complaints: “There are some other issues, Anderson, where she is just not progressive. I don’t know any progressive who has a super PAC that takes $15 million from Wall Street."

Sanders then went on to detail issues where his positions differ from Clinton's, including her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, her past support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, and his opposition to pipelines in New Hampshire and Vermont. “Those are just some of the areas," Sanders said.

When Clinton was up next, however, she shot back, suggesting she has little patience for Sanders’ take on her career, telling Cooper she doesn’t approve of Sanders’ attempt to position himself as a “gatekeeper” of progressivism.

Under his definition, she said, “Barack Obama would not be a progressive, Joe Biden would not be a progressive, [New Hampshire senator] Jeanne Shaheen would not be a progressive, even the late, great [Minnesota] senator Paul Wellstone would not be a progressive."

Her remarks came shortly after the senator found himself in an uncomfortable position when Cooper asked him whether Obama — who remains highly popular among Democratic primary voters — had failed progressives.

Sanders, who called for Obama to receive a primary challenge in 2011 but has gone to great lengths to praise the president during his campaign, paused and denied endorsing a recent book premised on a critique of Obama.

“In some areas, for example, in the trade area” Obama had not lived up to liberals' hopes, Sanders conceded, detailing his disagreement with the TPP that he regularly promotes as a point of comparison with Clinton.

Because of the back-to-back interview format, there was no direct back-and-forth between the candidates, but Clinton was also asked to analyze the politics surrounding her bid after Sanders came close to beating her in Iowa on Monday.

“That’s amazing,” she said of Sanders’ 70-point win among young voters. “I accept the fact that I have work to do” in winning them over.

But, she added, “they don’t need to be for me, I’ll be for them. It doesn’t really matter."